Feminists On Fox: Suicide By Optics
Previous StoryNext StoryThere’s been a lot of discussion in Radfem spaces about whether cooperating with conservatives is a good idea.
What? He’s tame!
Plenty of writers and activists have stepped up to remind us why conservatives don’t make good allies. Just because Sky Daddy agrees the sky is blue and talks real sweet, doesn’t mean we need to go back to him. He’ll only hit us again sooner or later.
But with such a complete media blackout, with social platforms banning us for nonsense like ‘misgendering,’ it’s not hard to understand why some feminists choose to take advantage of the few opportunities on offer to get the word out.
It’s easy to see how I ran across a Christian News article on Ovarit this morning about a little girl standing up to her school system, that devolved into her mother talking about Jesus.
Most of us are well aware that Jesus is not our friend. Regardless of presentation, anyone who preaches absolute life roles is not a feminist. But it’s getting lonely in Leftland lately, and conservatives are the only ones even calling women by name anymore.
Defection is possible because each side has a point, in its own way. But each side is getting too much mileage out of demonizing the other to ever admit this, making real answers impossible. Any admission of nuance is cast as ideological creep, asking questions risks slipping into no-man’s land.
But this pressure to conform tends to have the opposite effect, of course. The forbidden fruit looks even sweeter, and eating it makes you a rebel. You’re halfway to being a Revolutionary / Rugged Individualist already, depending on your perspective.
Most feminists traditionally thought of ourselves as liberals. But our leaders have abandoned us, and our organizations have shunned us. A few people here and there of various liberal pedigrees are peeling off and ‘leaving the left.’
Lesbian YouTuber Arielle Scarcella is a great example of the ideological creep that can happen when, instead of questioning things, someone just goes looking for alternative answers. Defection doesn’t solve anything, because the same problems exist across the political spectrum.
All this heavy thinking really takes it out of me!
Conservatives believe women are private property, liberals believe women are public property, remember? Misogyny is always recognizable, regardless of the motivation behind it.
But feminists have been arguing with conservatives and winning for a long time. They feel familiar, even safe, in a weird way. The old values have been defanged by modernity. Jesus might not be our friend, but he’s mellowed a lot with age.
We know that church attendance has been dropping for decades, and conservatives have needed to invoke all kinds of tricks to stay relevant. We can talk to The Heritage Foundation or Tucker Carlson, confident in our ability to walk away whenever we want.
The thing is, it doesn’t matter if walking in was our fatal mistake.
Too often, the truth just doesn’t matter. You know how humankind has been writing the same story over and over and over, about how the Good People win the day just by Doing What’s Right? I wonder if that’s our favorite fantasy because that’s almost never how it really works out.
Being the Good Guy means I’m bullet proof, right??
We’re naive if we think we can simply walk in, present our rational arguments, and win most people over that way. Optics are everything because they’re what we use to bring the picture into focus. Most people in the US are either looking through a red lens or a blue lens.
If you’re sitting across from Tucker Carlson, you will be seen through that red lens. Conservatives will mostly agree with you anyway, and liberals will ignore you out of habit.
Which is fine by the Trans Lobby, by the way. They are happy to have us all corralled in one corner where they can disgrace us all at the same time.
Accepting the conservative invitation is climbing aboard a sinking ship. Unless we’re talking about legislation that supports women and girls, it’s nothing but a photo-op for those looking to slander us.
And it’s working! I think the comparison of feminists to Nazis was metaphorical at first, Nazi was a byword for fascist for a minute there. Rush Limbaugh first used ‘Feminazi’ back in the last century, deftly condensing decades and centuries of resentment toward bossy, uppity women into a metaphor for the ages.
But it was a long time before the comparison became literal. Even Limbaugh wasn’t that absurd.
I laughed it off at first, but things have turned darker these past few years and Nazis aren’t metaphorical anymore. Anxiety is cranked up to 11 and loyalties are being questioned.
Add in generalized economic stress, and most people are too busy to look very deeply into much, and too tired to absorb it anyway. All most people are going to see is the Radfem sitting next to Tucker Carlson, in the clip their favorite YouTuber is smirking at.
Don’t make me come out there and see what’s making all that noise!
More people are finally waking up to just how upside-down most conservative, old-school ‘family’ values really are. Associating ourselves with them in a social setting implies agreement. Once upon a time, feminists would be on Fox News scowling over the latest challenge to abortion access. Now that they’re the only ones who will have us, we feel pressure to behave ourselves.
It’s not just that we’re talking to them, we’re being nice to them. On camera!
And when the new world sweeps away the last traces of the old, the New Religion will be only too happy to push Women’s Liberation into the past right along with it. A quirk of early Modern History. A quaint movement based upon outdated understandings of things, for a group of people we don’t recognize anymore.
It won’t matter how many of us are Marxists or lesbians. It won’t matter what the true history of women is or how hard we worked to escape it. Because history is written by the winners, and the old ways are on their way out, one way or the other.
Flirting with conservatism is helping to discredit feminism. Failing to address this sacrifices our integrity for short-term visibility. It’s participating in our own smear campaign. It’s handing live ammunition to our enemies.
I don’t think we should sacrifice feminism for views.
Have you thought to consider why conservatives are willing to have you on their platforms in the first place?
If you mean to imply that they are attempting to discredit us on purpose, I’m way ahead of ya...
I dunno. I really think women are now officially politically homeless. I think instead of saying "we're left" or "we're right," we women should say "we're women--and if you help us in a specific way, we'll acknowledge that help, and if you hurt us, we'll cause a ruckus. But we are never, ever "yours" to claim because we are women first and foremost." I really think we not only can walk a third way, but we should walk a third way. Look what Biden did to us when he thought women were "his"--without a backward glance. Joe Biden is not our friend just like Tucker Carlson is not our friend. We need some FDS in our political world.
Actually, I completely agree. This is a fairly rudimentary rundown of the situation, focusing on why those who do support women’s existence are not a good alternative. The so-called ‘left’ liberals are not really very leftist, which is collectivist philosophies as opposed to individualist ones like Neoliberal Capitalism. Which, of course, the Dems embrace whenever they can.I am kinda shocked at Biden, who knew that was the one thing he wasn’t lying about?? I definitely don’t mean to say that he and his administration are on our side, but I think we all know how they’re screwing us rn. There has been some noise about how maybe the conservatives have some good points after all and, you’re absolutely right, I think overidentifying with whatever label allows your brain to switch off and rot to set in.